On Friday morning, a Palestinian attacker opened fire at the Jalamah checkpoint. Israeli security forces returned fire and hit the shooter, who was taken taken away by a Palestinian van. According to Palestinian reports, he was moderately wounded with two bullets to the chest and three to the leg.

About an hour later, a Palestinian attacker tried to ram his car into a group of IDF artillery corps soldiers standing behind concrete barriers at the Halhul junction. The troops shot and killed the attacker. A knife was later found in the attacker's car.

Knife found in the possession of the attacker at Halhul junction (Photo: IDF Spokesman)

Overnight Thursday, the IDF's elite Duvdevan unit and the Shin Bet arrested the terrorist who carried out the vehicular attack near
Beit Aryeh, wounding four soldiers.

Muhammad Abdel Halim Abdel Alhamid Salem, 37, from the village of Al-Lubban al-Gharbi, was arrested and identified as being a member of Hamas.

After ramming into four IDF soldiers, Salem fled the scene. He then abandoned the vehicle he used and returned to his village, where Israeli security forces arrested him. The arrest, carried out by Duvdevan forces, was made with no resistance.

The moment of the vehicular attack near Beit Aryeh in the West Bank

Of the soldiers hospitalized in Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva, two remain in moderate condition and one is in light condition. The fourth soldier was released from the hospital.

In 2001, Salem was placed in administrative detention for six months, but in recent years he was not involved in any security offenses.

IDF forces at the scene of the attack (Photo: Ido Erez)

During his initial interrogation by the Shin Bet Salem admitted that he committed the attack after being influenced by Palestinian incitement in the media regarding the situation in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and the 'murder of Palestinian children'.

An initial report indicated that the vehicle had approached a group of soldiers from the Kedem battalion who were busy conducting routine security operations along the route, before ramming the soldiers and their vehicle, wounding all four.

According to police, a black Isuzu vehicle rammed into the four between the Palestinian village of Al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya and the Israeli settlement of Beit Aryeh-Ofarim.

The car was later found abandoned in the village of Rantis.

A search of the vehicle turned up an M16 rifle and a stun grenade and it is possible that a bigger attack was prevented. It was later learned that the rifle belonged to one of the soldiers and that the force of the vehicular attack made the rifle fly into the terrorist's car.